The Campaign Trail

July 13th, 2010
Round up of new ads from the Fall!

On the ‘town

July 13th, 2010

BunkerHillMonumentSmall02.jpgThe trailer for the new Ben Affleck movie, "The Town," isn't on the Web yet. The movie's scheduled to open Sept. 10. The trailer was shown before the advance screening of "Inception" last night. Jeremy Renner looks scary. Rebeca Hall, being Rebecca Hall, looks wonderful, and the whole thing goes on way too long. What makes the trailer worth noting is how at one point a character in voiceover says something to the effect, "There are 300 bank robberies attempted in the Boston area each year. Most of them are committed by people who live within a single square mile, in a place called Charlestown." Well, the AMC Loews Boston Common, where the screening was being held, is about a mile and a half from Monument Square. The theater was packed. You can imagine the response when "Charlestown" was spoken As Tip O'Neill might say, "All laughter is local." Presumably, an audience on Pandora watching a trailer for "Avatar" would have reacted much the same way.

New on DVD – July 13, 2010 – The Bounty Hunter and Chloe

July 12th, 2010
From Jennifer Aniston's latest attempt to create a film career -- otherwise known as The Bounty Hunter -- to Noah Baumbach's clever Ben Stiller comedy, Greenberg, here's our take on all that's coming out this week on DVD and Blu-ray.

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Jennifer Aniston is bounty hunter Gerard Butler's ex-wife, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- he's been hired to catch her. Let the fun -- not commence. Our very, very unimpressed critic said, "A romantic comedy is built from the relationship of its leads, and all The Bounty Hunter has to work with are blank stares."

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Sweet Hereafter director Atom Egoyan's latest tale of sexual mores and oddities stars Julianne Moore as an insecure wife who's so convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair that she hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, as a test, only to become enamored of Chloe herself. We thought that it ended as a letdown but that the film's "Hitchcockian overtones and apt pacing mark a welcome return to form for Egoyan."

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In this urbane drama from Margot at the Wedding filmmaker Noah Baumbach, Ben Stiller plays a surly misanthrope house-sitting for his much more successful brother in Los Angeles, when he enters into a curious relationship with his brother's young nanny. We thought this off-key story to be "perceptive and very beautiful."

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Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek resurfaces to star as an FBI agent who gets in way over his head in this politically tinged Taiwan-set suspense thriller that we found "directed with skill and precision."

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When California passed Proposition 8 to keep same-sex couples from getting married, the fact that the Mormon church was one of the proposition's biggest supporters riled many people, including the makers of this incensed documentary. While we appreciated the film's subject matter, some "overwrought and saccharine" passages undermined an "otherwise strongly worded piece of issue cinema."

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The ever-reliable Steve Buscemi plays a gambling junkie on a road trip to (where else?) Las Vegas in this low-budget drama. Our critic thought the cast was one of the film's strongest points (Buscemi, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, among others) but disliked the "paper-thin story" that was only "good for a quick laugh."


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Everything you need to know about this new wedding comedy (starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, and Carlos Mencia) is summed up by our critic, who asked, first, whether the film was made because somebody lost a bet, and then noted, "Never have 100 supposedly laugh-filled minutes felt more like a death in the family instead of a marriage."

Well Suited

July 12th, 2010
Camilla Akrans + Elissa Santisi & Liu Wen for Vogue China

Bits & Bytes: Andrejyny

July 12th, 2010
Bits & Bytes: The androgyny of Andrej, Carine Roitfeld's biography, Lady Gaga stylist Nicola Formichetti's fan page is up... and more.

The Swiss Refuse to Extradite Polanski and Set Him Free

July 12th, 2010

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Almost ten months ago, filmmaker Roman Polanski traveled to Switzerland for the Zurich Film Festival. Though he had been to the country many times, during this visit he was arrested and held as the country decided whether or not he'd be extradited back to the United States for his 30+ year-old crimes. As we all know, in the late '70s, Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl, and plea bargained his sentence to unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl. He spent just over a month in a psychiatric unit as his sentence, and when it seemed like the judge would treat him unfairly, he fled, kicking off a decades-long argument about his actions, his flight, and the consequences.

Switzerland, at least, has made its judgment: Roman Polanski is a free man.

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Will Joaquin Phoenix Be Marvel’s New Hulk?

July 12th, 2010

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In case you missed the news, Marvel and Ed Norton lobbed a gossip grenade into geekdom on Friday night. Marvel announced, once and for all, that Norton would not be reprising his role of Bruce Banner / The Hulk in The Avengers. Norton's agent fired back to HitFix, calling Marvel's statement "purposefully misleading" but also noted that he and his client "accepted their decision with no hard feelings."

Whether those feelings are good or bad are inconsequential to the Marvel moviemaking machine. With ComicCon only a week and a half away, Marvel is racing to recast. They are hoping to have all those Avengers onstage come Saturday, July 24. The rumor mill is about to go into overdrive and we have our first name, courtesy of CHUD. Their Marvel sources report that an offer has gone out to none other than Joaquin Phoenix.

It's rumor, and it's only an offer. Phoenix could still turn them down. Nevertheless, it's a surprising choice, though I could see the actor-turned-rapper doing it. Phoenix needs a comeback big time, and he's never been entirely above big popcorn movies. He is certainly as talented as his predecessor, and looks enough like Norton and Eric Bana that many who don't follow this stuff as exhaustively as we do (and there are many!) would barely notice. But it's hard to understand why Marvel keeps flinging themselves against notoriously troubled and difficult actors. Could Phoenix really be cheaper and more malleable than Norton?

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Pure Abbey

July 12th, 2010
Hedi shoots Abbey for Vogue China

Q&A – The Extra Man’s Kevin Kline on Florida, Frankenstein Dancing, and the Importance of Being Funny

July 11th, 2010
Kevin Kline has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation, with a much-respected career in both theater and film. He has won two Tony awards, for On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance, as well as an Oscar, for A Fish Called Wanda. The latter role illustrates his ability to move between comedy and drama with ease, and, indeed, his performance remains one of the few comedic turns ever to win an Academy Award. In his latest film, The Extra Man, he plays a fallen New York aristocrat who scrapes by providing "companionship" to wealthy older women. He spoke at length about the film during a recent interview with the press.

Q: Would this film be any different if it weren't set in New York?

A: It's very New York, with all it has to offer culturally. My character is literally feeding on that, on art openings and galleries and museums. All these social events that are very specific to New York. I don't know if he cold exist in L.A., for example, though there are extra men in L.A. and Florida. When we played the Sarasota Film Festival, so many people came up and said, "You're in an extra-man city!" There are so many wealthy widows and retirees in Florida, and they all need a male friend.

Q: So what was the attraction of the role for you?


A: I knew on page two that I wanted to play this character. The word "delight" kept coming up. It just delighted me, and tickled me, and made me laugh out loud. I found his voice so original, even though you can compare him to other eccentric characters in literature and film. He was just so outrageous, and flamboyant, and extravagant, and contradictory, and complicated, and funny.

Q: Do you know anyone like him?

A: I'm sure I've met them, but didn't necessarily know what they did. Working in the theater in New York, one can meet flamboyant men-about-town. Bons vivants. But I didn't base him on anyone in particular. I just took him from the novel and from the screenplay.

Q: Do you miss the camaraderie of the theater when you do a film? That familial bond of a small group of performers trying to make it work?

A: Actually, there can be familial bonding on a film as well, and that phenomenon can get trying in the long run in theater, especially if you're in a theater company, which I was, for four years. The family can get dysfunctional as time goes on. People say that an ensemble takes years to develop, but you can have an instant ensemble if everyone is -- and I hate the expression -- on the same page, in terms of the project you're working on. You're all in the trenches together, and it can be very intimate.

Q: How about the dancing you did in the film? How did you develop that?

A: In the book, he dances in a much more -- sort of a fox-trot movement. He says, "I try to move whatever I think is rotting." We kind of took that to the next step, where everything is rotting. I'm moving pretty much everything. A brilliant choreographer and an old friend named Patricia Birch was brought in, and we tried different things with her. Finally she said, "Why don't you try that goofy modern dance, that Martha Graham-meets-Frankenstein dance, and just do your own thing?" It was pretty free-form and much longer. It was about a five-minute dance, and they just took a little piece of it.

Q: Even at the end, we don't fully understand this character. Do you have to understand him in order to play him?

A: That's a very good question, and the answer is no. He is a mysterious character; he's full of contradictions. There's a side of him that's very theatrical, as if he's playing a role. Part of that is wanting a mystique and being mysterious, and part of it is that there's things he doesn't want to talk about. That's part of his charm. If you understand the pathology of a character, it's not necessarily dramatic or funny or interesting. Also, you've explained it all away.

Q: How do you create that feeling of an age gone by -- this notion of living in an older time, while the rest of the world has moved on?

A: With the character. I think the character is quite aware that it's moved on and finds it vulgar. Shameful and common and without style. His response to that is to live in the past, to create his own past. He's a guy who lives in his own world. He's Don Quixote, in a way. They're just windmills, but, to him, they're giants who need to be conquered. That ability to delude yourself into making the world a more beautiful place than it is -- and to scorn those parts which aren't up to your standards -- is very critical.

Q: Are there any unique challenges to approaching comedy that you wouldn't find in a more serious role?

A: I remember Richard Attenborough said something once. I did a film with him and I went off afterward to do A Fish Called Wanda. He said, "Comedy is so difficult because it's so binary." It's either funny or it isn't. With comedy, sort of funny doesn't work. You've got to thread the needle and get it right.

What, Exactly, Does Bruce Willis Smell Like?

July 11th, 2010

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Does Bruce Willis smell like gunpowder, sweat, and dried blood? In my mind he always did, but my world was crushed today with the discovery of his new cologne, titled simply "Bruce Willis."

Sparing no hyperbole, LR Health and Beauty CEO Tilo Ploger had this to say, "I personally feel that the new Bruce Willis fragrance is the manliest scent in the world." So, the cologne smells like pine trees, bourbon, and exhaust fumes? I wish! Instead, the new fragrance, also available as a body wash and deodorant, smells of pepper, grapefruit, and something called "vetiver", which I can only assume is the bottled smell of his sheets after a night with Alisha Klass (note: I have come to find out that vetiver is a type of grass grown in India).

Racked reports that the marketing slogan for the fragrance is "Smart Guys Live Forever." If Bruce Willis dies, we can all sue for false advertising! Unless, of course, Bruce Willis isn't a smart guy. However, if he is indeed an immortal, you can follow us right here on Cinematical for all the latest news on Die Hard CLXII (that's 162 -- I'm a smart guy).

I posted the question on Twitter and Facebook -- What does Bruce Willis smell like? You can read people's responses after the jump (and make sure to chime in with your own).

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